Saga Pinto
The last time I shared a comment on TT football was just before the U17 team went to Korea. At that time I think some of your colleagues on the SWF felt that I was writing in defense of my son. Truth be told, I was in part. However my comments were also an attempt to share a perspective which at the time I don't think the majority grasped. Maybe after the perceived failure of current U17 and U20 teams, it will now make more sense to you.
I have read with great amusement the comments made on the forum after the U20 team's 5 nil loss to Mexico. Some forumites are blaming the coach, others blame the players, some say it is Jack's fault (poor Jack) others think its the lack of a development system. Ready for this? The answers is (d) None of the above. The real culprits for this big let down are the fans, particularly those on this forum and their foolish expectations. Hear me out before you stone me.
The problem with you folks is that you harbor unrealistic expectations. “We going Brazil” Really?
Your unrealistic expectations are based on what I consider to be 3 fluke occurrences:
1 Senior team qualification for Germany( fluke).
2. U17 Qualification or Korea (fluke)
3. U20 Qualification for Egypt (also a fluke).
Fluke occurrences are no basis for building a sustainable business model. In each of the above cases we qualified for the WC on the last goal in the last game. I am not a knowledgeable soccer fan so I may get names and times mixed up, but I seem to remember Dennis Lawrence (of all people) scoring a once-in-a-lifetime header to get us to Germany in the last do or die game, (how many headers has he scored in his career?). Young Molino scored one goal in the last do or die game against Jamaica to get us to South Korea and if I remember correctly, Sean De Silva scored one goal to get us to Egypt. Imagine scoring one single goal in a 3 or 4 game tournament and qualifying for the U20 world cup. Teams that have the right to be disappointed by a 5-0 result at that level, are those who have earned the right to be there by consistent performance. T&T lost all 3 games in Korea conceding 15 goals and scoring 1. We lost in Germany (conceding 5?) and drew one in Egypt (conceding 5?) for a total tally of about 25 against and 2 for. When the US embarrassed us last time with a 3 nil cut ass, men on the forum wanted to die. Did you really expect a different result? The problem is that fans have deluded themselves into thinking that these flukes are a norm, so when we collect 5 from a world class team like Mexico, everybody upset.
This delusion exists at many levels, not just with the fans. Some of the coaches themselves are infected with the madness. When we were in South Korea for the U17 tournament, I had a brief chat with Anton Corneal at the players hotel the day before the first game against Ghana. I asked him how the boy were feeling and if he had worked out the approach to the game. He said that the approach was all out attack and we were going to run the Ghanians into the ground. He predicted a TT win by 3 clear goals. Now I am no football coach, but that sounded like sheer madness to me. All out attack Anton? You must be mad. I told him that I heard that Ghana selected the final 20 players by lining up their best 40 and releasing the lions. Anton didn't find that funny at all. I said to a friend of mine later, “Chris, we getting 5.” So said so done. T&T persisted with this “attack with full force” lunacy throughout the tournament as if our opponents were the underdogs instead of us. Talk about delusional.
Now, I don't mind if the fans and coaches delude themselves. Fans and coaches really don't really have much to lose. The TTFF is hell-bent on hiring expensive coaches thinking that it will make a difference and since they have money to burn, every coach will promise them all sorts of miracles and take their money.
I am most concerned that the madness of unrealistic expectations has also infected the players, their parents and handlers. Every little boy who gets called to a TT youth team begins to dream of being the next Dwight or Russel or Shaka. Parents who see their son dribble through the unskilled competition at the trial stages, pretty soon begin to believe that crap. What the players and parents don't realizes that York, Latapy and Hislop, in a T&T context, were also flukes. These 3 happened to possess the innate talent that none of our current youth players have. The problem is that some people, including certain idiotic local coaches, make these young players and parents believe that it could happen to them too. They don't realize that, apart from the dynamic trio, the other TT players who are currently playing overseas football for real money, (Kenwene, Carlos, Stern etc) are by international standards, mediocre at best and could drop out of reckoning any day. Yet all these parents think that their son is special and that they will make it big like Dwight.
Experience does not support this expectation. We had the same bunch of players make it to 2 youth world cups, U17 and U20. Many of the parents who went to Korea were genuinely expecting that their sons would be discovered by foreign scouts and plucked from obscurity like Dwight was. How many of them have been so lucky? None. If you go back to my email to you before the U17 world cup, I picked just one player to make it big, Daniel Cyrus. I still have a hope for him, that is, if his genius agent Mr Look Loy doesn't screw it up for him. The other players with youth world cup experience who have banked their futures on pro football, are, with the exception of Primus, “earning their living” in that poor excuse for a pro league in T&T, waiting for some fairy god-father to take them away to Europe or the MLS. They don't realize that the reason they cant break in to the big times is that they just don't have the talent. Every one of them (except Cyrus) who has been to overseas trials and has returned empty handed. Incidentally, where is Jamal Gay now?
I want to thank Touches and Jah Goal for opening my eyes to the harsh realities of being a soccer parent. Their comments on my son's skill level years ago, caused me to re-evaluate what I was led to believe by certain supposedly well informed persons. After a careful review of specific criteria, I concluded that the chances that my son (or any of the other U17 players) had of “going pro” (outside of the TT Pro league) were remote at best. This certainly was not the lotto that I wanted to gamble his future on. I began to focus him on using his soccer talent as a ticket to get a free education. So far, he is not doing too badly with a 3.7 GPA and is currently preparing for the LSAT to enter Law school. My role has changed from being his football manager to his academic manager and it is my job to make sure that he stays focused. I hope that Leston Paul, Sean De Silva, Stephen Knox, Qian Grosvner, Uriah Bentick and the other few who are on scholarships in the US, understand that the real value of their soccer talent is to get free education and not play the ass in school, as most young men tend to.
It may appear that I am presenting an unfairly pessimistic and negative view of our talent pool, so I am providing you with a free acid test to assess potential pro prospects. Here it is...Jake Thompson. Jake requires no work permit to play in the UK and is a product the UK development system. He is also yards ahead ability-wise of any of our local U23 players and yet he is one of many fighting hard to earn his place in the real world of pro soccer. My advice is that unless your “next Dwight” son can match Jake for ability and has a European passport or Green Card, then make sure he knows how to read, write and spell well enough to maintain a 2.0 GPA and meet NCAA standards.
Finally Saga Pinto, I have a prediction for forumites who still believe that T&T belongs at the world stage. Sorry to bust your bubble, but it will be another 20 years at least before T&T qualifies for another world cup at any level. My advice is to stock up on Prozac. Until then, I want to encourage you to continue contributing to the forum. It has been a source of much comic relief for me.
